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# Animal Instinct
- URL: https://www.merionwest.com/animal-instinct/
- Published: 2025-12-10T15:59:38.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-01T22:24:05.000Z
- Description: W. D. Ehrhart
- Author: MW Editors
- Tags: Poetry, Arts

> Today a Cooper’s Hawk perched itself

> outside our bedroom window on a low branch

> of a small tree not twenty feet away.

> The courtyard of our condo complex.

> Frequented by all sorts of wildlife:

> sparrows and wrens, mourning doves, juncos,

> hummingbirds, now and then a cardinal,

> chipmunks, rabbits, lots of squirrels.

> But birds this big, hunters, only rarely.

> In thirteen years, in fact, only twice before.

> We’ll see them floating on the currents

> high above, but never down where we are,

> certainly never still, or perched where we

> can watch them even for a moment.

> This one stayed for several hours.

> We could see its tail feathers sticking down

> behind the branch the bird was perched on,

> talons wrapped around the branch, the sharp

> hooked beak designed for tearing flesh.

> It sat so still, it almost seemed a statue

> or a decoy, but the head kept turning,

> turning, turning, and the eyes kept looking

> for something, movement perhaps, something

> to kill. After all, all living things must eat.

> But the little critters in the courtyard

> that my wife’s been feeding nearly every day

> were, this morning, nowhere to be seen.

### W. D. Ehrhart's most recent books are a 2025 collection of poems, [*Smart Fish Don't Bite*](https://moonstone-arts-center.square.site/product/ehrhart-w-d-smart-fish-don-t-bite/YD2QGAXXBUFHBNEM4K6HS6AF?cs=true&cst=custom&utm%5Fmedium=email&%5Fhsenc=p2ANqtz-%5FW-lL6cwwW8bsQANmJwm3MsSw-S42Z2xGh0k2oeotYQjMZaBNz9DqAOukdKP95CuNaM19QsZuXdCh2rJglFzD6U6sG4g&%5Fhsmi=380810861&utm%5Fcontent=380810861&utm%5Fsource=hs%5Femail) from Moonstone Arts, and *Getting Shot At: Essays on War, Conflict & Culture Clash,* forthcoming in 2026 from McFarland & Company, Inc. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wales at Swansea and taught English and history at The Haverford School in Pennsylvania from 2001 to 2019.